October 22, 2006

I returned home this evening from a cocktail reception following my second cousin's wedding. Lo! the crosswords waited patiently for my homecoming. And lo! the glasses of wine impaired not the cognition. I'm always a sucker for a wedding—I haven't seen this cousin in 20 years, probably (I attended as my mother's guest), but as she walked down the aisle resplendent in a sparkling gown, my fiendish eyes grew misty.

There were two Monday puzzles on tap for Sunday-evening solving: the NYT, by John Calvin Williams, and the Sun, by Kevan Choset. Before turning to the puzzles, I printed out copies of the NYT for my mom and husband...and they're still working on them. The NYT puzzle's theme gave me an aha when I figured out what was going on—the first three appeared to be anagrams of each other. Then I hit the fourth theme entry, PERMUTATIONS, which is a particularly apt anagram of the other three. I'm not always in an anagram mood, but...aw, who am I kidding? I'm usually in an anagram mood, and this one hit the spot nicely.

Interestingly, the Williams puzzle clued SUSAN as [Actress Sarandon], and Sarandon's Bull Durham character made up two cross-linked entries in Choset's Sun puzzle: ANNIE and SAVOY. (Hang on a sec here...let me add that movie to my Netflix queue, 'cause I haven't seen it in years and I love it so. I don't even particularly like baseball, but this movie puts in a good word for it.) The Sun puzzle's called "Verbal Volley," and I think the theme consists of three phrases starting with volleyball words: BUMP, SET, and SPIKE. Are there other volleyball words I'm missing? LOVE and PEPSI don't fit in there, do they?

Updated:

I spent the morning on a first-grade field trip to the Children's Film Festival. If you get a chance to see Winky's Horse—a Dutch movie about a Chinese girl who moves to the Netherlands, falls in love with a horse, and learns about Sinter Klass—don't miss it. Great movie, touching and funny. Coming out on DVD this week...in the Netherlands. I'm doubtful we'll get a subtitled version over here any time soon.

Harvey Estes, who apparently left a number of solvers utterly confused about how his Sunday NYT puzzle worked yesterday, has today's CrosSynergy puzzle. In this puzzle, Harvey EATs out by omitting EAT from the theme entries. Man, those were hard to make sense out of—always nice to have to work a little on a Monday, though.

Fred Jackson III's LA Times puzzle was more typical Monday fare, as it did not make me cogitate so much.